Tell Us A Tale Bilingual Storybook Project:
Celebrating Community Language Schools Through Stories
Over 12 months, this project brought together 20 teachers and 180 students from 10 community language schools across Sydney and the Illawarra to celebrate and share their languages and stories. Teachers first came together in workshops to select and adapt culturally significant stories for use with their students. They then took these stories back into their classrooms, where students explored them through their community language, learned about their cultural meanings and traditions. Then, with the support of a professional artist, students responded creatively to the stories by producing original artworks. The stories and the artworks were then brought together to create 10 professionally designed bilingual children’s books in 9 community languages and English.
The illustrations were showcased in a special event and exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery in May 2026 and the completed books were celebrated with families, schools and community members at a community launch at Campbelltown Library in July 2026.
Teaching and learning resources to accompany the books will be available here soon, helping community language teachers use the stories to build language, literacy, speaking and cultural learning in their classrooms.
Click on the books below to read the free digital editions.
Sina and the Eel
Samoan/ English
The Golden Apple and
the Nine Peahens
Bosnian/English
Princess Tandampalik and
the White Buffalo
Indonesian/English
The Ant and the Grasshopper
Arabic/English
The Magic Pot
Chinese/English
Bonbibi of the Sundarbans
Bangla/English
Nüwa Mends the Sky
Chinese/English
The Legend of Bánh Chưng and Bánh Dày
Vietnamese/English
Athens: A Name with a Story
Greek/English
The Clever Old Lady and
Her Walking Talking Pumpkin
Marathi/English
Special thanks to the principals, teachers, students and families of the participating community language schools: Pelangi Indonesia Language School; Holy Cross Greek Language
School; Vietnamese Community in Wollongong Language School; Whalesong Education Chinese Language School; Al Habib Arabic Language School; SCCALA Samoan Language School; Shanhe Education Chinese Language School; Bangla School, Bardia; Bosnian Ethnic School; Australian Marathi Vidyalaya. And to Enya Gannon, ACLS Education and Projects Officer, for realising and managing the project. Also a big shout out to Kay Yasugi and Lilian Rodrigues-Pang for their wonderful teaching with stories and storytelling workshops, and Pala Hoyas for her amazing art workshops.
The Tell Us a Tale storybook project and Celebrating Community Language Schools Through Stories Festival were made possible with support from Multicultural NSW, the Department of Home Affairs and the NSW Department of Education Community Languages Schools Program (CLSP).